Is Your LLM Secretly a World Model of the Internet? Model-Based Planning for Web Agents

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Gu, Yu, Zhang, Kai, Ning, Yuting, Zheng, Boyuan, Gou, Boyu, Xue, Tianci, Chang, Cheng, Srivastava, Sanjari, Xie, Yanan, Qi, Peng, Sun, Huan, Su, Yu
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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_version_ 1866915220111228928
author Gu, Yu
Zhang, Kai
Ning, Yuting
Zheng, Boyuan
Gou, Boyu
Xue, Tianci
Chang, Cheng
Srivastava, Sanjari
Xie, Yanan
Qi, Peng
Sun, Huan
Su, Yu
author_facet Gu, Yu
Zhang, Kai
Ning, Yuting
Zheng, Boyuan
Gou, Boyu
Xue, Tianci
Chang, Cheng
Srivastava, Sanjari
Xie, Yanan
Qi, Peng
Sun, Huan
Su, Yu
contents Language agents based on large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated great promise in automating web-based tasks. Recent work has shown that incorporating advanced planning algorithms, e.g., tree search, is advantageous over reactive planning for web agents. However, unlike simulated sandbox environments, real-world environments such as the web are rife with irreversible actions. This undermines the feasibility of backtracking, a cornerstone of (tree) search. Overly relying on test-time search also hurts efficiency. We advocate model-based planning for web agents that employs a world model to simulate and deliberate over the outcome of each candidate action before committing to one. We systematically explore this paradigm by (1) Proposing a model-based planning framework, WebDreamer, which employs LLMs to serve as both world models and value functions; (2) Training specialized LLMs as world models with a scalable data synthesis pipeline. Empirical results demonstrate that WebDreamer achieves substantial performance improvements over reactive baselines. It is competitive, while being 4-5 times more efficient, with tree search in sandbox environments (VisualWebArena) and also works effectively on real-world websites (Online-Mind2Web and Mind2Web-Live). Furthermore, our trained world model, Dreamer-7B, performs comparable to GPT-4o, highlighting the potential of specialized world models for efficient and effective planning in complex web environments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_06559
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Is Your LLM Secretly a World Model of the Internet? Model-Based Planning for Web Agents
Gu, Yu
Zhang, Kai
Ning, Yuting
Zheng, Boyuan
Gou, Boyu
Xue, Tianci
Chang, Cheng
Srivastava, Sanjari
Xie, Yanan
Qi, Peng
Sun, Huan
Su, Yu
Artificial Intelligence
Language agents based on large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated great promise in automating web-based tasks. Recent work has shown that incorporating advanced planning algorithms, e.g., tree search, is advantageous over reactive planning for web agents. However, unlike simulated sandbox environments, real-world environments such as the web are rife with irreversible actions. This undermines the feasibility of backtracking, a cornerstone of (tree) search. Overly relying on test-time search also hurts efficiency. We advocate model-based planning for web agents that employs a world model to simulate and deliberate over the outcome of each candidate action before committing to one. We systematically explore this paradigm by (1) Proposing a model-based planning framework, WebDreamer, which employs LLMs to serve as both world models and value functions; (2) Training specialized LLMs as world models with a scalable data synthesis pipeline. Empirical results demonstrate that WebDreamer achieves substantial performance improvements over reactive baselines. It is competitive, while being 4-5 times more efficient, with tree search in sandbox environments (VisualWebArena) and also works effectively on real-world websites (Online-Mind2Web and Mind2Web-Live). Furthermore, our trained world model, Dreamer-7B, performs comparable to GPT-4o, highlighting the potential of specialized world models for efficient and effective planning in complex web environments.
title Is Your LLM Secretly a World Model of the Internet? Model-Based Planning for Web Agents
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.06559